


Broad Strokes

by rhysgore



Series: FKM Fills [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Art, Canon-Typical Gore, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 11:18:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6114862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysgore/pseuds/rhysgore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future is a changed place, but as far as Nate knows, the rules of dating are basically the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broad Strokes

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted here from fkm. this didn't turn out -exactly- like i wanted to, per say, but it was very fun to write and something i'd been meaning to do for a while because i have a big dumb crush on pickman.

Nate fidgets under Hancock’s stare. The mayor’s gaze is unsurprisingly intense, and every second he’s faced with it makes Nate more and more worried that Hancock knows, somehow, what he’s done.

 _It’s not like you didn’t do what he said,_ he reminds himself. _He asked you to check out what was going on. Nothing more. You did that._

Still, he’s pretty sure that if Hancock had known exactly what had happened at Pickman’s Gallery, the mayor would've kicked Nate out of Goodneighbor on his ass. 

“So, you're back. Anything you can tell me about what’s going on?” Hancock asks him, snapping Nate out of his worried, circular thought process. 

“Uh, y-yeah.” He pushes up his thick glasses, and clears his throat. “Well, the term ‘gallery’ is a fairly accurate one. But we’re not talking postmodern here. I actually don't know exactly what this would be classified as. I’m not so up to date on wasteland art movements, and-” Nate coughs slightly, again. “S-sorry. He’s uh, he’s using corpses to make art. Blood as paint, but also like, weird gibbeted corpse statutes. The whole shebang,” he says. _It was beautiful,_ he doesn't say. 

“Damn. That’s fucked up.” Hancock sits back, pinches the bridge of his nose, rubs at his forehead. “So what happened? Did you put him down, or what?” 

 _No, I met him and I let him go because I was too busy admiring his work._  

“He wasn't home. There were a ton of raiders there, though. I killed some of them, and got the hell out of there. They were there for the same reason I was. They’ll probably ambush him when he gets back.” Nate glances down, looking at his feet. He curls and uncurls his toes. 

“Huh.” Hancock crosses his arms. “Well… you wouldn't mind going back there and checking, would you? Not right away, but we gotta make sure that bastard’s dead. Even if he is killin’ mostly raiders, I can't let that kind of shit fly, especially not this near. Understand?” 

“Y-yeah, I’ll do it.” Nate cracks a thin smile, ignoring his heart skipping a beat. “We’ll nail that sick fuck,” he adds, somewhat lamely. His attempt at enthusiasm seems to put Hancock at ease, though, and the mayor smiles back at him. 

“That’s the spirit.” 

* 

Two days later, Nate finds himself outside the gallery again. It’s eerily quiet this time- no chatter from raiders, or any of the other nasties the Commonwealth’s home to. Nate fishes around in his pocket, and find what was left for him last time. Crumpled white paper, decorated with a single bloody heart, the words “Thanks, Killer”, and accompanied with a gift. He might be over 200 years old, but he can still recognize a love note when he sees one. 

He steps into the house, wrinkling his nose as he does. As artistically as corpses are laid out, there’s only so much that can be done to keep them from smelling. But he’s been wading through what seems like a sea of corpses ever since he left the vault- he’ll get used to it quickly. 

The foyer has been redecorated since the last time he was there. It’s been cleaned- the floor and walls scrubbed of excess blood, the decorations of flowers and severed hands in their proper places once again, the rug straightened out. Nate knows it’s wrong- it’s wrong even to be here, he should have told Hancock, let someone else take responsibility for everything going on in this damn house- but he takes a moment to admire. The world ended, but some people still cared about cleanliness and aesthetic. It reminds him of home, in some weird, fucked up way that he can’t quite grasp. 

He shakes his head, and walks to the side room. 

There’s a new statue in there now. New bodies. Most of them headless and limbless. Long wooden skewer stick out of the ground, and each one hosts one of these torsos, penetrating them waist to neck and holding them upright, facing the door. Arranged like an audience, Nate realizes, all facing him. Their arms hang from the ceiling by wires, each pair doing a macabre imitation of clapping. A carefully stacked pile of heads sits on an altar at the front, each face contorted into an expression of shock or agony. Decomposition has already started in many of the bodies- their stomachs are distended, or have burst already, organs spilling onto the floor. Nate can hear the sound of flies clearly above that of his own heartbeat, loud as it is. 

On top of the heads, there is a note. White crumpled paper. 

Nate hesitates. Then, he picks it up. 

 _Killer_  

 _I hope you like what I did with the place. I used the people you so graciously helped me remove. Their ugliness was a blight upon this world, but thanks to you, I can transform it into something far more lovely._  

 _If you're reading this, you got my last note, and something pulled you back. I would very much like to speak with you again, this being the case._  

 _I will not come back to this house. If you wish to meet me, I will be underneath the Mass. Pike Exchange every Wednesday at midnight. Come alone._  

All signed once again with a bloody heart. 

Nate can hear his heart thud-thud in his chest again, loud like a drum. His hands shake, with something that is distinctly not fear or disgust. 

The statue… the bodies twisted and malformed and made beautiful, all for him. 

Surreptitiously, Nate shoves the note in his pocket. 

* 

“So, what did you find out?” Hancock asks him, for the second time. 

For the second time, Nate lies. “He's dead. Raiders. Irony, and such.” He rolls back and forth on the balls of his feet. 

“Heh. No kiddin’.” Hancock twists the cap off an unopened bottle of whiskey. “A drink for the hero of the hour?” 

“Y-yeah. Sure.” 

* 

All week, Nate tells himself it’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea to follow a crazy serial killer with a fetish for very literal body art, it’s a bad idea to go exactly where he wants you to go. It’s especially bad if said serial killer develops a fascination, and hacks up the bodies (bodies of people Nate himself killed, no less) as some sort of weird… courtship ritual. 

He’s smoking again. A single cigarette held between shaky fingers. He hasn’t smoked since before the war, but he always did it when he was nervous, until Nora convinced him to quit. Two bad habits coming back to him in one night- smoking, and seeing dangerous men. 

Whatever Pickman intends for him, his strange methods of picking people up have worked. 

The moon is high in the sky over the Interchange, and Nate’s figuring that it must be around midnight when he hears a soft cough from behind him. 

“Hey, killer.” The voice is soft and smooth and familiar, even if Nate’s only heard it once two weeks previously. He turns, greeted by a silhouette of a man standing there, silently appraising him. “I didn’t think you would come. Are you here to kill me?” 

Nate gulps. He shakes his head. 

“How can I trust you?” Pickman still speaks softly, calmly. He takes a step forwards, into the shadow of the former bridge. The moonlight doesn’t shine as harshly there, and Nate can see his face clearly, the neat beard and steely eyes. 

“Because-” Nate hesitates, thinking. “B-because I thought you would kill me, and I’m still here, out in the open. And anyway, I’ve spared your life before. I don’t have a reason to kill you now.” 

Pickman smiles. _Like a wolf,_ Nate thinks. _Which would be cliche, but I don’t think I’ve met another person who knows what a wolf is here._

“You’re nervous, killer. Don’t be.” He steps forwards again, only an arm’s length away now, and reaches a hand up to Nate’s face. Every logical part of Nate’s brain screams at him as he lets the murdering, crazy artist card a hand through his messy red hair. “Haven’t gotten it cut in a while, have you? Afraid of someone with a knife coming near your face?” His fingers ghost down Nate’s cheek. “What about your neck?” The softest touch, tracing up and down where Nate knows his jugular vein is. His face flushes. He’s being teased. 

“I’d like t-to know the person on the other end of the knife before w-we get intimate…” Nate curses his nervous stammer, even as he leans into the delicate touch. His cigarette is long forgotten, cooling in the damp ground. As he gets closer to the other man, he notices a few things. Pickman is slightly taller than him. He smells nicer than anyone Nate has met in the Commonwealth so far. And his eyes, while as steely as they were when Nate first saw them, are alight with intensity.

Fingers dip lower, playing with the edge of the neckline of Nate’s shirt. Pickman stares at his exposed skin, seemingly fascinated by it. It’s smooth, not marred by scars that Nate has had ample opportunity to collect in his lifetime, both pre- and post-vault.

“Did you like the new display, at my gallery? I think it’s one of my greatest works so far. It wouldn’t have been possible without you,” he purrs, thumbing along Nate’s collarbone. 

“It was” _horrific, violent, a crime against nature_ “beautiful.”

“You seemed like the type who would appreciate it. So many in this world don’t understand art when they see it. The war destroyed so much _culture_.” Pickman sighs, and Nate feels the same twanging in his chest he felt inside the gallery. “People who don’t understand… People who are afraid… They’re better off being part of the art than they are as its audience.” 

“The Commonwealth has no shortage of p-p-people like that. I’ve seen it. They call you a monster, but- but I’ve seen them. You’re not a monster. You’re purifying this place. I can help.” 

“I’ll hurt you.” The man leans forwards, close enough that Nate can feel air against his mouth. “It’s inevitable, and I won’t regret it. Will you?”

He couldn’t have predicted this. With everything that had happened to him in the last few months, Nate would have thought he was done with surprises, but apparently not, if the flush of his face and nervous, anticipatory beating of his heart was anything to go by. 

“No,” he breathes, and leans forwards, kissing Pickman firmly. His lips are softer than Nate expected, but the kiss itself is anything but. There’s a stinging pain as his lower lip is bitten hard enough to split it, and there are hands on Nate’s neck and in his hair, pulling and scratching, nails digging into his skin hard enough to draw blood. _It hurts,_ Nate thinks, tasting iron from his split lip, _it hurts so good._  

When they part, Nate’s blood is trickling down Pickman’s chin, red rivulets almost black in the moonlight. Pickman notices him staring.

“We work well together,” he says, amused. 

Nate wipes his face, savoring the sting when the back of his hand passes over his new cut.

“This is only the beginning.” 

*  
They can’t stay together. Not only is Nate in the habit of running around with people who would discourage him from shacking up with Pickman, but he’s busy. Helping people who need it, searching for his son, saving the world. Regardless of his schedule, however, they have an arrangement. Every time Nate clears out a den of raiders, or uproots a Gunner base, he makes sure to take a body, sometimes two if he can carry them, back to Pickman. The gallery is growing, and slowly but surely, Nate assures, it will bring a light back to the Commonwealth.

**Author's Note:**

> as usual, you can follow me on tumblr @legatelanivs and yell at me about whatever fallout related thing you want.


End file.
